Friday, April 30, 2010

You may have noticed something similar to "posted by philmon" at the end of that last post ... "posted by jeffmon". Brother Jeffmon (yes, he is actually my brother) is now a contributor to this blog! Whenever he feels the urge.

And yes, I shamelessly heisted the rastafarian suffix from "jeffmon" when I started this blog back in .... eh? Aught Three! (makes me sound real old timey, doesn't it?).

Check out his post on Term Limits. He is right. I have been against term limits on principle myself. They're tempting, but it ultimately only masks one of the symptoms. It doesn't address the cause of the disease. Would I be sad to see them? No. But the lack of them isn't what got us where we are today.

What makes a career politician? Reality in the United States of America is that in order to be elected (and more importantly, re-elected), you have to bring home the bacon to your district or state. An altruistic legislator might get elected, but won't be re-elected unless he digs into the slop trough and passes out goodies to the voters. He will make the argument that he has to participate in pork in order to serve his constituents.

It is an unfortunate weakness that keeps us from simply voting the bum out. We keep our man in office to try to recover our 'fair share' of goodies from the government trough. We get career politicians.

So are term limits the answer? It seems like we need them, because it's clear that an entrenched legislator becomes corrupt. The voters in those other states (it's never 'our guy') just keep re-electing the same ones. How did it get this way?

If we look at the Constitution as ratified at our nation's founding, there is no provision for bacon distribution. Article I Section 8 does not establish a pork system for the use by the legislature to ensure their re-election. That didn't come along until the sixteenth amendment, ratified in 1913. It allowed the federal government to lay taxes without regard to census or enumeration. It allowed the government to skim money from the productivity of its citizens for its own purposes.

The same year, the seventeenth amendment destroyed the Senate, which was intended to equally represent the states and to act as a damper to the more populist House. Now it is elected by the people, not by state legislatures. This makes the Senate more populist. It makes the composition of the Senate subject to more influence by the nation as a whole, especially when the federal government has the ability to collect and distribute money. It is no longer the less volatile, more staid body of the legislature. It is another House (where revenue bills are supposed to originate).

[What else was going on around 1913? Probably nothing relevant to this discussion...]

Two later amendments attempted to rein in some adverse effects of the sixteenth and seventeenth amendments. In 1951, the twenty-second amendment attempted to curb the excess brought about by FDR, who was elected to four terms as president. Roosevelt was a flagrant bacon distributor. It was an attempt to treat the symptoms, and did not go far enough to have a meaningful effect.

Then in 1971 1992, the twenty-seventh amendment prevented legislators from voting for themselves a pay increase that took effect before their next election. No big deal if you can just buy another term.

Term limits are not the solution. To cure the fundamental problem, the sixteenth and seventeenth amendments should be repealed. There should be no earmarks, pork barrel projects, appropriations or any other vehicles for the legislature to use in order to buy votes. Term limits would be unnecessary, because the mechanism for corruption in the legislature would be dramatically reduced.

However, term limits could be a useful tool to help achieve the repeal of these amendments. If there is less pressure to be re-elected, good senators and representatives will be better able to resist corruption. No one dares try to cut off the bacon supply now, but with nothing to lose, the legislature could repeal laws and amendments to do just that. After the damage caused by the sixteenth and seventeenth amendments is reversed, term limits will become irrelevant.

Can we do this overnight? Nope. It took a hundred years to get this way. It's a physical addiction. We have to have good, honest men with the courage to begin the process. And we have to elect them.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

I heard about this this morning through the Tea Party Network I'm a part of. And not surprisingly, they heard about it through Glenn Beck.

Now I like Glenn quite a lot. I think he's on the right track. Sometimes he gets off on things where I think he's barking down a side-trail, but he eventually comes back and continues in the right direction with (mostly) the right arguments.

At first, it sounded like the argument being made was that the bill had stuff in it to allow illegal aliens and felons to vote. Which wouldn't shock me considering all the crap stuffed into "teh" Health Care Bill that didn't have anything to do with Health Care.

But when I read the bill ... and it's a short, sweet one ... I wasn't too alarmed. And I'm not sure how alarmed I should be about this bit in particular. After all, I think if Puerto Rico wants to vote to be a state... well then let 'em vote. Deal is, they already can. So why this "non-binding" bill? Why now?

So I decided to let Glenn make his case and do some followup research on my own. And this is what I came up with.

There’s nothing in the bill about illegal aliens voting, or felons or prisoners voting. And Glenn didn't say that there was. He was putting this bill in a larger context.

There has been a push in the past to allow Washington DC and Puerto Rican representatives to vote in Congress.

There are also progressive organizations working with the Democratic party to get illegal aliens the vote, because they figure those votes will break their way. And you’ve got progressive organizations like the Center for American Progress … all a part of the Obama coalition … working to get felons the vote. It’s a massive community organizing effort to get votes behind the progressive party. Which right now for the most part is synonymous with the Democratic party.

But it’s not all a part of the bill. Getting statehood for Puerto Rico is just one part of a strategy to secure a permanent majority for the progressive movement. It’s just one prong, and I don’t see where we should be fighting against admitting another state to the union. I don’t have a problem with that.

Of course, none of this would matter if we still went back to the Constitution as to what role government is to play in our lives. But the general Cloward-Piven plan is to get enough people on the government dole that they 1) continue to support the government dole, and 2) would support a move to a different form of government that would guarantee their place on the government dole if an “emergency” came up. You know. Like the insolvency of the country or something.

Right now, at this moment, Puerto Rico is largely run by the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico (NPP). So it’s a good chance that if they seated congressfolk, they would add to the US’s current supermajority. So they want it NOW because they like the probable result. They wouldn’t be pushing for it if it were some conservative party in control. So it’s not wrong … it’s just a danger to our republic at this time because of the current dynamic, and the current dynamic is in favor of a Fundamental Transformation.

But if they have a progressive majority long enough, they can increase the number of people on the government dole. We’re (as a country) about half and half progressive/conservative in the last several elections. They only need to push it a little.

This is why I think the answer is to speak up calmly, firmly, and rationally and convince our friends, one at a time if need be, to at least question their premises and understand what our founding ideals were and what was good about them. We have a cultural crisis -- one that has been nurtured by progressives. And it manifests itself at the polls. We have to convince actual voters, not politicians and government officials.

Now basically, the danger of the bill according to Glenn is that it is designed as part of a plan by the NPP. He’s saying that currently in Puerto Rico there’s about 43% who want to be a state, 20% want to be independent, and about 27% who like things the way they are.

Which means over 60% want …. wait for it …. “Change”.

So the bill lays out the voting this way …

Do you want to stay the way we are, or do you want ‘change’? Vote … 60/40 – “Change”.

Now status quo is off the table.

Next question.

Do you want to be independent, or do you want to be a state?

Well now you split the status-quo vote, and it’s a choice between losing the sweet deal of being a United States Commonwealth … they’re betting they can get at least 8% of the remaining 27% (probably a lot more) to vote “State”.

Two more Progressive senators and another progressive congressman or two.

It’s a numbers game. Divide, conquer. Get the result you want. Then do what you want and claim a mandate. It’s been done before, at least the accellerated congressional seating plan. Twice. The Tennesee Plan. Not saying it’s wrong or right. But it gets them the results they want, and they don’t feel constrained by the Constitution. They want to … fundamentally transform it. And that's been done before, too. Generally in places that elected people who ended up being dictators.

Mr. Beck says tonight he's going to show some of the NPP campaign ads from Puerto Rico and show that the Tennesee Plan is, in fact, the plan. We'll see.

The newscaster asked "is this another example of Big Government telling us what we can and can't do?"

Ummmmm .... let me think here for a second, because that's a toughie.

At any rate ... I think maybe we should change the wording. It is an example of a special interest group (the food cops -- often fronts for animal rights groups) trying to use the coercive power of the Government to force us do do or not do what they want us to do .... or not do.

And we have gotten away from a government that gives them a big "hell no" when they try.

These are the kinds of things we have to do. Fight the misinformation by challenging the misinformed.

Co-worker mentions something that brings up socialism. I mention we're getting closer and closer to it.

She: "But socialism isn't the same as communism."Me: "For all practical purposes, they are. They're based on the same misconceptions. They're both forms of Statism."She: "Ooooh, pullin' out the fancy words. 'Statism'. Well so is Democracy."Me: "Socialism and Communism are top-down Statism."She: "Bottom-up."Me: "It's always sold that way, but it's definitely top-down."She: "I guess I just missed that whole 'Bolshevik Revolution' thing."Me: "That was because it was sold as bottom up, so the movement was popular. But it never works out that way in the end."

One thing I like to do to these people is this... two questions. The most famous example of Communism so far has been the Soviet Union. What party ran the Soviet Union? And what was the official name of the Soviet Union?

Thursday, April 22, 2010

intellectual flair /ˌɪntlˈɛktʃuəlflɛər/ - the repetition of things that one believes will make one sound reasoned and noble that one has heard but not necessarily thought very deeply about. Easy to say and sounding good, but devoid of any sort of personally understood reasoning behind those things.

Not unlike buttons on a TGIF waiter are meant to make one appear "fun".

So on my way in this morning, I'm behind this car with a "Live Simply That Others May Simply Live" bumpersticker.

Irony much?

Of course, the person driving the car wants to be in charge of just how simply they will live, which is probably not far below where he or she could afford to.

I'm thinking of a boy in a grass hut in Africa. Dirt floor. Some grubs and grains gathered. Watching the car with the "Live Simply" putting smugly off down the dirt road with her ipod blasting out some eco-folk rock. And he cocks his head. Shrugging. And eats another bug.

Son look at the people lining up for plasticWouldn't you like to see them in the national geographic?Squatting bare-assed in the dirt eating rice from a bowlWith a towel on their head and maybe a bone in their noseSee that asshole with a peace-sign on his licence plateGiving me the finger and running me out of his lane

[..]

They give no thought*They buy as much as they wantThey give no thoughtJust as long as there's enough for them

*(yes, I realize "thought" is not the word Ben Folds used. I cleaned it up for my blog here, and it really doesn't change the meaning).

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Caught this on Morgan's blog the other day. I know, it happens a lot. After I listened a few times, I put it on my MP3 player.

The cool progressive kids who are the new "frat boys" ... they don't like it. They call us names and try to make fun of us. But we don't care. We have jobs. ;-)

Ok, that was cheap. It's a little stiff in places (probably too much emphasis on diction for the style). But it's catchy and it grew on me. Plus the chick in the gym and the one doing backup vocals ... tres cute.

Anyway.... too much fun not to post. And there's more after the video.

I saw the arch in the video. Suspected Missouri roots. I was right. And it turns out Ambassador Tom really was a US Ambassador at one point, and was Chief of Staff for a UN Ambassador. Lawyer. Wash-U Professor. He is Tom Shweich, and he's currently running for Missouri State Auditor.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Went to a local 9-12 Project meeting friday evening. Good group of people. A group of about 25 or so adults from I'd say late 20's to 80 years old. Motivated, well informed, decent people. My faith has been reinforced.

Sombeody brought up a sign they had seen at one of the Tea Parties. Went out to Makestickers.com to mock it up as a bumpersticker. May have to try to have it made.

Turn their gleeful ridicule right back at them. I love it! She's still here, and probably the biggest thorn in their collective side. And right now, November is not something they're looking forward to.

Got an email forwarded to me today entitled "Dumb and Dumber" showing the President and his wife holding the wrong hand over the wrong side for the Pledge of Alliegance.

I was immediately suspicious -- 'cause -- folks, come on. These people aren't "dumb". You don't get to be President of the United States and be dumb. You can't get there. And yes, I am fully aware that this applies to George W. Bush as well -- which would send howls of protest up from those on the left.

Just because you disagree with a person's worldview doesn't mean they're dumb. And, of course, intelligent people with incorrect worldviews are the most dangerous of all.

Anyway, I was skeptical I had to check it out and if I found it not to be true, I had to debunk it. We try not to pass along instructions to believe here at the Clue Batting Cage and we humbly suggest everyone do the same.

First thing I thought was … this could be a mirror image. It’s easy to flip a picture and reverse left for right and right for left.

The person who started this anticipated that, and pointed out that their wedding rings were on the hand over the heart, meaning it WAS their left hands and not a mirror image. Plus it made a point of pointing out that the buttons on Barack’s jacket are on the correct side, which is another thing I looked at. Well … It’s pretty obvious that the button problem was “corrected” in photoshop and the photoshopper was not a professional. You can see the discoloration and change in pixel pattern around the buttons and holes. The bottom button hole has a large dark rectangle round it. They simply copied and pasted from the other side and maybe softened the edges of the rectangle. I’ve done that many times myself … well, not on button holes ;-) The buttons themselves look horrible. That was probably done via a cloning tool.

The rings … I would almost lay money that Michelle has a nicer ring than that. Hers looks sloppy. His looks convincing enough.

What made me suspicious was you don’t get to this level by being that dumb about basic protocol like that – plus … they have handlers.

Naturally, I don’t do this out of any love for the Obamas, but out of love for the truth and fairness. It does us no good to use the same tactics they use to discredit us … to discredit them. We have to remain honest. So when I see stuff like this I’m suspicious about, I tend to check it out.

There's nothing worse than getting caught with your pants down on something like this. To be called on something you have said that isn't true discredits you, even if you didn't know it wasn't true. It's very difficult to recover from such a position in an argument. Read. Get your facts straight. Question even your own biases. And arrive at the truth.

As Glenn Beck repeats ad nauseum (and I mean that in a good way), we must remember who we are, and this is what he means. Fair and honest, decent people. If the truth is on your side, you will win people over with your reputation for these things. People can tell the difference between a rabid ideologue and a thoughtful, fair, honest person.

Of course, this is what progressives believe. It allows them to make up the rules as they go along. But it is not so.

The Constitution wasn't written in a vacuum, and we have the historical documentation that puts very well into content what the framers intended.

This editorial is so permeated by the progressive worldview that I imagine the author can't even see it.

Clearly the Constitution upholds the right to free association -- private organizations should be free to include and exclude whomever they want to on whatever basis they want to. And yet the author holds a judicial ruling saying just that concerning the Boy Scouts of America as an example of conservative judicial activism?

It is a huge overstatement to say that the Heller decision says that the Constitution prohibits any regulation of guns. It just says you can't outlaw them or regulate them to the point of being useless.

Affirmative Action clearly violates the ideas of free association and of equal protection. Everyone is to be TREATED equally under the law. But to progressives, unequal outcomes proves unequal treatment. It's equal outcomes they are after, and they seek it by restricting liberty and property rights to those who they perceive as having an "unfair" advantage. In this, they anoint themselves the arbiters of "fair".

If a judge undoes a ruling that was handed down through judicial activism -- by following original intent, that doesn't make the judge an activist judge. It means the judge is a good judge.

Now to the point that there certainly CAN be judicial activism from the conservative side -- the fact that there has been doesn't justify more of the same from either side.

Laws get passed by Congress, and judges interpret that law and they are required to take into account the lawmakers' intent. They have access to the congressional record. Laws aren't made in a vacuum and it was never intended that judges make up what they think the law should be. That is not their role. At least not in the original design.

If and when the Republicans return to power in Washington, we can only hope that they remember what got them suddenly and unceremoniously dumped out of power the last time. Basically, it was running as Republicans and then governing as if they were Democrats, running up big deficits, with lots of earmarks and interfering with the market.

But their most lasting damage to the country has been putting people like John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

There seems to be a lot of confusion on the part of the intelligensia in the media about the Tea Party.

I would like to clear a lot of that up here.

The Tea Party is about the role of government in a free society.

Different Tea Partiers have different beliefs. It is not a monlithic crowd. A lot of people in the Tea Party support offshore drilling. But the Tea party is not about offshore drilling. Most people in the Tea Party are not happpy about illegal immigration. But the Tea Party is not about immigration. A majority of people in the Tea Party probably supported Republican candidates in the last election. But the Tea Party is not about the Republican party. A large portion of Tea Partiers probably support or at least admire Sarah Palin. But the Tea Party is not about Sarah Palin. Most Tea Partiers happen to be white. But the Tea Party is not about race. Yes, some Tea Partiers are "birthers". But the Tea Party is not about Obama's birth certificate. Practically all Tea Partiers are opposed to Barack Obama's vision for the United States. But the Tea Party is not about Barack Obama. A lot of Tea Partiers oppose gay marriage, but the Tea Party is not about gay marriage. I'd wager most Tea Partiers are Christian, but the Tea Party is not about Christianity. Republicans are in a position to benefit greatly from the Tea Partiers. But the Tea Party is not about Republicans. Democrats have a lot to fear politically from the Tea Party at this time. But the Tea Party is not about Democrats. Most Tea Partiers probably supported the Iraq war, and most were probably against TARP under the Bush Administration. But the Tea Party is not about George W. Bush.

The Tea Party is about the role of government in a free society.

It is about our Founders' vision and how far we have strayed from it. It is the one thing that ties us all together. We can argue among ourselves about our beliefs and how they fit in to the common vision, but the common vision remains. It is what sparked the movement and it is what brings all of these disparate groups together.

Every day I see attacks on the Tea Party movement over one or more of the issues above, trying to paint the whole thing with a broad brush as something it isn't at its core.

One last time, the Tea Party is about the role of government in a free society.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

‘Nothing can be more offensive than to be lectured about what you know by someone who clearly does not know.’ — Robert Stacy McCain (hat tip to dyspepsiageneration)

Just spent an evening with family, and one of the progressive ones was among them. She and my step-son got into a discussion on politics that wandered through basically the limited government arguments -- it went on for quite some time.... anyway eventually it got around to Tea Partiers, and she said something about Tea Partiers killing a policeman in Indiana, and that it was happening "all over".

I'd been pretty much biting my tounge up to that point, which I tend to do in the name of family harmony. But of course, this is the same person who triggered the "Stop an Echo" post.

I had not to this point mentioned I was a Tea Partier, but I decided that it was time for me to "come out" to her as such. I told her that cop killing is so far removed from what the Tea Partiers stand for that it just wasn't even plausible. I said she needed to send me the article.

Well I know she can't find it - not because such an article doesn't exist, but because she just can't. But then I vaguely remembered a policeman killing in Indiana or Ohio a while back that I think the MSM tried to tie to the Tea Parties.

I haven't found that one yet, but I did find the Pentagon dude (John Patrick Bedell) and the attempt to tie it to the Tea Parties. Of course, all just speculation due to some general anti-government screed. Naturally, everybody knows that nobody on the left ever made an anti-government screed, and clearly everybody on the right is a "Teabagger" and therefore hateful, racist, crazy, and violent -- or so the story goes.

Also found similar attempted connections with Joseph Stack, the kamakaze dude.

But no direct connections were made to Tea Partiers in the two stories I read about. They just used the term "right-wing". Apparently anyone with any gripe against any government agency means "right-wing" to her. And, again, to her, "right-wing" = "Tea Party".

A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not necessarily a square. Trapezoids are four-sided objects as well. But they're neither rectangles nor squares. That's a thing I know. I should add that.

On the way home she was talking to my wife about "these Tea Partiers" and all their "violence" and how I was going to end up just like my dad (who believes you shouldn't pay your taxes and that 9/11 is an inside job and that the U.S. Government has a machine that can cause hurricanes ... but I digress).

At any rate, I guess I should scour the net for that story about the Indiana/Ohio guy.

What got really funny is she's always going off on Fox News, then of course does the oh-so-open-minded "well they're all biased". She was apparently quite concerned that my step-son would discuss politics especially with someone he disagreed with, and seemed proud that she never discussed politics with anyone who didn't agree with her.

Why now? This video is almost 2 years old, from a speech in front of an LGBT Democratic Delegate luncheon.

Now those who follow my blog know that I have an open mind about this. I know it was the Clinton campaign that first brought this issue up. I know there is suspicion about it, and I won't say "you're wrong!". It is possible that we've been duped. But as for me I buy that he was probably born in Hawaii. I also think, in the end, that it's irrelevant at this point anyway. The time to clear that up would've been before the election, and it was cleared up to the satisfaction of the vast majority of Americans.

I also agree with Glenn Beck that, regardless, this is a losing issue. About 90/10, people buy that Obama's a natural born citizen. Which is why I have to wonder, along with him, why this tape from a Democratic event filled with avid supporters ... loyal Obama delegates ... was released at all, let alone just now in the midst of a concerted effort on the part of Democrats to paint the Tea Party Movement as Racist, Violent, and Crazy.

After seeing two major (but unsuccessful) attempts at provocation ... the black caucus march and the Nancy Pelosi march -- through the throng of Tea Party Party protestors right before the vote on the health care bill... the continuous needling from Obama and other Democrat leaders and their allies in the press ... it is very easy (especially after reading Alinsky) to imagine that this was a calculated leak to get a reaction of "see, told ya so!!!!" out of the Tea Party to use as a broad brush to paint us as a bunch of nutballers.

They need us to react in a manner that will repulse average Joe America (although ... they probably still don't get that the Tea Party is filled with Average Joe Americas. But it only takes a few idiots.)

There are other explanations for Michelle's slip, crowd-pandering not being the least. "Look how worldly my husband is. He will solve all of your problems."

Friday, April 02, 2010

"Can you imagine if some of these reporters were working on a farm? You planted some seeds, and they came out the next day, and they looked, and nothing's happened! There's no crop! We're going to starve! Oh, no! It's a disaster!"

I don't think anyone is saying "look! nothing's happened!" We just know what you planted, Mr. President. We're not afraid it won't come up. We're afraid it will.